N. Philly lays out an unwelcome mat for Trump
Just before 11 a.m. Friday, Asa Khalif was on his hands and knees beneath a tree on a sidewalk off a mostly quiet Broad Street, using a black marker to write "Dump Trump" on a piece of cardboard.
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Just before 11 a.m. Friday, Asa Khalif was on his hands and knees beneath a tree on a sidewalk off a mostly quiet Broad Street, using a black marker to write "Dump Trump" on a piece of cardboard.
A few hours later, when the weather was hot and the language more fiery, Khalif, a Black Lives Matter leader in the city, knocked to the ground a lone Donald Trump supporter who showed up for his visit to Philadelphia.
"He put his hands on me first," Khalif said as police separated the two.
The Trump supporter, Jerry Lambert of Bucks County, dusted himself off and continued to rile up the crowd, but Khalif and other members of Philadelphia's Coalition for Real Justice were more irked at the 12 to 14 black religious and community leaders who had a private meeting with the GOP presidential candidate in the catering hall of a nonprofit run by Greater Exodus Baptist Church.
"It's a slap in the face to us young people who are putting our lives on the line. These are our elders who we looked up to, who preached to us in our churches," Khalif said.
The protest of Trump's visit to North Philadelphia coalesced at Brown and Broad Streets, growing to over 100 people by the time the nominee slipped inside a back door on Carlisle Street at 2 p.m.
Protesters included Juntos, a Latino immigrant advocacy organization, which prepared long cloth signs, stenciled with black chain-link fence and redbrick designs, and the words #wall off Trump.
Erica Mines of the Philadelphia Coalition for Real Justice also directed her anger at the people who invited Trump to Philadelphia.
"We are tired of them handing our communities over to our oppressors on a silver platter," she told the crowd.
A few blocks away, at Brown and 13th Street, Carla Griffin, 54, sat on her front porch and wondered how anyone could take seriously Trump's brief dip into Philadelphia.
"He's an embarrassment. This is a photo opportunity for him," Griffin said. "This is what politics has been reduced to."
Bobby Farms, a North Philadelphia resident walking down Brown, couldn't fathom how Trump got an invite to the city either.
"Men of color must be out of their minds," Farms said. "A tiger can't change his stripes."
City Democratic leaders also formed a united front against Trump on Friday.
"This whole thing about 'make America great,' that little stupid hat that he's walking around with, that's all about turning back the clock," said City Council President Darrell L. Clarke. "And us as minorities in these communities understand what it used to be like when there were really no opportunities for us in the workforce, really no opportunities for us for education. That's what that's about."
One of the men who met with Trump, Malik Boyd, a registered Republican, said he understood the anger of the protesters but disagreed that black leaders shouldn't meet with Trump.
"It's either all war or conversation. One of those sides has to win and I'd prefer it to be conversation," he said.
Lambert asked police to charge Khalif after his signs were torn and he was knocked down.
"I came here to express my First Amendment rights peacefully," Lambert told police. "That was not peaceful."
Khalif was not charged.
215-854-5916@jasonnark